Facing Leadership Today

Leadership Essay Introduction

Time when leadership only involved barking orders to the juniors has passed. Good leadership is of paramount importance to the success of an organization. Effective leaders will propel an organization to achieve its goals and vision. Such strong leadership requires goal setting and good communication strategies that effectively motivates employees. In the current market conditions, leaders ought to devise strong strategies to survive the existing dynamic business environment. The complexity in the market has hugely been blamed on the global financial crisis that has led to many organizations, either going under or having to lay off a large portion of their employees. The following paper discusses global financial crisis and employees’ motivation as some of the challenges facing organizational leadership. The paper also attempts to find solutions to these issues.

Organizational Leadership

According to Watson Wyatt, 86% of organizations that got surveyed predict that the financial crisis will negatively affect their businesses, and have had to make the necessary changes. The reported also foresaw a 26% reduction in workforce; 25% expected to hire freezes and increment to the amount the employees contribute to their health insurance, in the next one year. This falls under the toughest decisions that organizational leadership has to make, and they must do it in a considerate and compassionate manner. This has posed as one of the biggest challenges to leaders worldwide since a solution to keep their organization afloat has proved elusive. The other biggest challenge to organizational leadership is workers motivation.

For an organization to compete effectively with other companies with the growing competition in the current market conditions. In order to be a leader, an understanding of what motivates the employees around, is paramount. The discovery of the fundamental and basic needs that coworkers, employees and bosses have, should be a prerequisite. Majority of people aims at necessities and a basic income. They also, in addition, have a need for friendship and social connection. People merely want to fit in someplace and feel as if they belong. The other influential category of human want or need is the need for challenges and growth. A job might turn out to be dissatisfying when a worker gets lured to it by a high salary, and are unable to make friendships, and connection at their place of work. As leaders, ought to try their level best so that the majority if not all employees get adequately motivated. It is much is to lead and motivate the employees with knowledge of their undeniable needs.

The Challenges Facing Leadership Today

Among the challenges facing leadership today, the financial crisis is causing the greatest headache to top leadership in many organizations. Leadership in various organizations has had to employing cost cutting measures. These measures may include laying off quite a large number of employees.

In an article on Wall street journal, Spain central bank has lost independence due to the financial crisis. The rates of borrowing on Spain’s bond rose to 6.7%; level financial analysts have regarded as dangerous. This comes amid struggles by Madrid to avoid falling into the euro zone crisis (House, 2012).

In another article ‘What Managers Can Learn from Akhilesh Yada,’ the writer shares the opinion that business leaders can learn a few tricks that would see them succeed in leadership. Akhilesh Yada has lately been receiving credit for his efforts, and input in the resurgence of the U.P. Yadav advises business leaders that aligning the organization's goal with employees’ aspirations is paramount. Leaders, learning from Yadav’s strategy, should be open to new ideas (Anand & Garia, 2012).

The financial crisis arises from bets on assets that are risky and on corporate culture. It would have been avoided had global leaders in the financial industry cultivated and embraced cultures such as transparency, stewardship and respect in their organizations. Servant leadership is a leadership model whereby the leadership has the employees in mind as they make various decisions that touch on them and the organization as a whole. It contradicts the traditional leadership model in which leadership gets accumulated and centered on a few people who go barking orders to employees, or inferiors. Servant leadership can effectively be employed to assuage the effects of the financial crisis to an organization. This can be achieved if the leadership involved their employees in finding the best way out for all the stakeholder involved. Servant leadership boosts the workers’ morale even in tough economic times, as they feel that the top management has their interests at heart.

Competency based leadership emphasizes on the leadership being competent, skilled, experienced and skilled at what they do. Such leadership is usually in a position to predict future trends in the market and even foresee such dangers as the financial crisis and prepare accordingly in advance. Such managers get hired by organizations, either because they succeeded in their previous careers, or they have outstanding academic qualifications.

Integrity in leadership ensures that only the right thing gets done despite the circumstances. It also entails honesty and doing the right thing even if one does not make any personal gains from those things. Integrity in leadership goes a long way in motivating employees. They feel secure under the leadership, and hence they enjoy while working for such an organization.

Courage in the top management, just like integrity, is vital. Courageous leadership makes the right decisions at the right time despite the repercussions, without fear or favor. To avoid a menace such as the financial crisis, some bold decisions which may impact other people negatively, have to be made. Such decisions call for leadership that is courageous.

Competency is paramount for any leadership. This ensures that the correct and economically viable decisions get made. Competent leadership foresees hard times in the future and lays out strategies to assuage any negative impact.

Leadership Essay Conclusion

For organizational leadership to sail an organization through the current market conditions, several virtues, and decision making tactics have to be employed. These may include integrity, decision making and competency. Servant leadership, employed effectively, can serve as a solution to various problems facing organizations worldwide. Other leadership models that can be employed effectively are the competency based leadership model.